Coming Home

Home is more than a place. Home is a feeling—a feeling of being where things are familiar and right. Even a new place—a place we've never set foot—can feel like home if its smells transport us to that place of familiarity. And there is perhaps no scent more familiar or comforting than vanilla. But wait: Don't get the wrong idea. Because in perfumery, vanilla is anything but plain. (Common? Yes. Plain? Never.) It can be light and playful or dark and brooding. It can be sweet or briny. Vanilla is a wingman, rounding out the harsher edges of certain notes and complementing their lightness with its depth. Vanilla can be a chameleon, but it always feels familiar.